More Film Fright for Halloween

Roger Ebert has posted an interesting selection of “films about horror” on his website – all viewable right there, for free, legally, albeit in a fairly small format. The films are: The Third Man, Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, Frankenstein, Detour, The Fall of the House of Usher, Fritz Lang’s M, F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, and Tod Browning’s Dracula.

Like I said, an interesting selection. The thing that comes immediately to mind as a unifying principle joining these movies together is a certain psychological complexity. And of course they are all black & white.

But while there is indeed a certain element of horror to all of them in one way or another, only a few of them seem to me particularly good as Halloween fare – most obviously the original sound versions of Frankenstein and Dracula, both terrific movies at any time of year but especially so now.

(On some later date, you might watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari followed by The Third Man, to see the influence of German expressionism on film.)

zerode

is an over-caffeinated and under-employed grad school dropout, aspiring leftwing intellectual and cultural studies academic, cinéaste, and former poet. Raised in San Francisco on classic film, radical politics, burritos and soul music, then set loose upon the world. He spends his time in coffee shops with his laptop and headphones, caffeinating and trying to construct a post-whatever life.